In an era of GPS and Google Maps, how does a jet plane disappear?

It sounds like a real-life version of Lost: a 272-ton Boeing 777 takes off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and vanishes less than an hour into a flight to Beijing, falling off air-traffic radar screens and triggering a massive search involving high-tech warships, nimble supersonic jets, all-seeing satellites—the combined technological resources of 26 countries. Days go by without a trace of the airliner. Big Brother looks high and low—and finds nothing.

The world lost contact with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the early hours of March 8, somewhere in no-man’s-sky between Malaysia and Vietnam. Every day that followed brought new theories of what might have happened as dark turned to dawn. Was the plane hijacked to some remote landing strip and, if so, where are the passengers? Or had the jet malfunctioned and crashed into the ocean—and if so, where was the debris? As search teams looked for answers to these questions, the millions of people watching for updates about MH 370 were left wondering how, in 2014, technology could come up so short, allowing a 209-ft. (64 m) airliner carrying 239 people to disappear for the longest period of time in modern commercial-aviation history.